Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I am incredibly concerned. Australia has an economy that relies on everybody understanding what pays the bills in this country, and I can tell you that the biggest thing that pays the bills in Australia is the resources sector. Thirty per cent of corporate taxes come from mining. For the well-paid jobs, hundreds of thousands of Australians are employed on at least double the average salary. The royalties that go to states and territories as well as the PRRT—what concerns me in particular is that we have a national interest test that has been abused by people who don't have the same standards as those of us who come to the parliament have. They don't have the same requirements on the reporting of donations. They don't have the same restrictions on overseas donations as members of parliament have.

We have organisations that are receiving significant amounts of money from offshore organisations with no disclosure, and I will list them. The Environmental Defenders Office received the payment for the penalty that was levied by the courts for their confecting of evidence and their behaviour in the Tipakalippa case. Millions of dollars were paid by an unknown donor. According to reports now, it has been forgiven. I have asked the Australia Institute and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis directly, in Senate estimates and at committee hearings, about where their money comes from, and they do not disclose it. Why should we be concerned about that as Australians?

There's a very specific example. In the UK, a big antifracking campaign was run. It was designed to undermine the energy security of the country. As time has played out, we have seen that the reliance of Europe on Russian gas has made them incredibly vulnerable during the Ukrainian war. But those countries could've received their own gas and their own developments. It was only after that incredibly damaging campaign against the gas industry, which leaked into Australia and other countries, that we discovered where that money, the funding for that campaign, came from. It came from Russia. So that was not in the national interest for that country, and now they are paying an enormous price for not having their own energy security.

Australia now runs the same risk. We have organisations on social media, which are funding senators in this place, that are receiving money from offshore organisations whose stated aim is to shut down fossil fuels—yet there's no requirement to disclose where and how much. We know that it was reported—I think it was in the Australian Financial Reviewthat Senator Pocock receives money from the KR Foundation. This is an organisation that states on its home page that it wants to phase out fossil fuels. That money goes to a foundation established by Senator Pocock and his wife, and I believe that his wife draws a salary from it. What other organisations are out undermining our national security with no disclosure about where their money comes from yet are happy to attack me and other people for standing up and defending the industries that pay our bills—to incredibly high standards?

We're about to see legislation come into this place, from another senator, that talks to issues that are designed to shut down investment confidence in this country. It is un-Australian. It is dangerous, because the money from these sectors pays the bills—Medicare, PBS and probably large chunks of schools and roads and hospitals. Yet those behind this dangerous campaign, funded by anti-fossil-fuel companies from offshore, are not being disclosed—are not being restricted. The government should be very, very aware of what it is doing to us in this country. We will be incredibly poor if we don't pull it up.

I think transparency does matter. The Australia Institute runs a podcast called Follow the Money but won't disclose its own sources. Australians deserve to know who is funding campaigns against our precious industries—our national interest—and they deserve to know urgently, before damage is done that we cannot unwind within a generation.

I also want to turn to the fuel crisis in Australia right now. There is no lack of supply in this country. Australia has ships coming on the water. It has deliveries here in this nation. But what we saw from the government was a lack of leadership. Last week, no doubt everyone in this place received messages, as I did, from family members, friends and small businesses: 'Should I go and fill up my car? Should I go and get reserve stores of fuel for my generator?'—or for whatever it might be. The government members would have received those too. There was their opportunity to make a plan, to call together the four big wholesalers and distributors and to prioritise the places that needed fuel first. At the moment, there are fishing boats at the dock unable to go out and catch fish. There are farmers unable to go out and harvest their crop. There are people who own feedlots who are worried about whether they should shoot the stock in the feedlot because they cannot get food to them. There are mining companies that are on rationing for fuel supplies. Why is that? It's because the big wholesalers prioritise their petrol stations and retail outlets.

I understand that Australians were concerned. I know that my family was. I know that I was. But, when you had people driving into places with a thousand-litre pod on the back of their ute and filling it up, and nobody said anything, and when people were bringing in 44-gallon drums to fill, on the back of domestic vehicles, that should have been a warning to the government—to the energy minister. Instead, with his hands in his pockets, he said that people should buy more electric vehicles. What a ridiculous, outrageous, awful lack of leadership!

Australia is a great country. We have all the resources and reserves that we need. But the government of the day must lead. They must lead. In this case, the energy minister and the Prime Minister did nothing, and now we are in a very serious situation where fuel has run out at domestic bowsers, on farms and for fishing boats. I call on the government—stand up, be a leader, stop looking backwards, demand to know where donations from and take some leadership for our country and ensure that we have the right fuel supplies in the right places.